Islamic Populism in Indonesia and the Middle East

Perpustakaan SMA Negeri 2 Cibinong




for example, was well known for his contempt for the cultural backwardness he

associated with Islam (Alexander 2012: 41).

But it is the Turkish experience that is highly informative because the
rewards that have accrued to the AKP from its navigation through democratic

politics are particularly plain. Though the party is regularly accused of wanting

to impose socially conservative religious values on the Turkish Republic, its

leaders know success at democratic competition has in fact provided a powerful

shield against threats emanating from the self-appointed guardians of the

country’s secular Constitution, especially within the judiciary and the military.

The way that such matters external to mere religious precepts have
reshaped attitudes towards democratic competition has also been seen, quite

dramatically, in Egypt. Here the Salafi current jumped on to the democratic

bandwagon shortly after the fall of Mubarak even if its leadership struggled to

21
theologically validate the decision. At this time it was apparent that democracy
would provide it with useful instruments to compete in steering the direction of

social, economic and political change in Egypt, including with the Muslim

Brotherhood itself, with which it was in competition especially in the more

impoverished communities around the country. 22

Given the significant Salafi presence in contemporary Egyptian politics
(Al-Anani 2012: 31), it is useful to consider the malleability of its agenda in the

face of social change. In fact Salafi politics in Egypt has been pliable enough to

allow not only for the movement’s adaptation to electoral competition but also

its considerable acceptance of global capitalism – though predictably, one that is

23
laced with declarations about religious ethics and morality. The reason for
such shifts is arguably the changing make-up of the Salafi movement itself,

which no longer only includes old-style preachers and firebrands, but secularly

educated young students and professionals as well as smatterings of small-and
24
medium-scale business owners in the modern sector of the economy. Providing

Perpustakaan SMA Negeri 2 Cibinong




more illustration of their political malleability, Salafi vehicles quickly

repositioned themselves to ally with the military after the fall of the Morsi

government, clearly in the hope of filling a vacuum that would be left by the
Muslim Brotherhood once it had been driven further underground by a sudden

and vigorous new round of political repression. It is therefore evident that the

Salafi movement is far more complex, due to engagement in modern competition

over power and resources, than one that stereotypically aims to turn the Egyptian

clock back to medieval times as a result of the imperatives of religious doctrine.

In this we see an important distinction with Turkey that is also relevant

when considering the Indonesian case. Unlike the AKP – which clearly towers
over any rival even after the subsequent break with the Gülen movement – the

Muslim Brotherhood has faced competition from a resurgent Salafi movement

that encroaches on its claim to represent a community of the powerless and

dispossessed that is homogenised by a common faith. Such competition might

further induce elements within the Muslim Brotherhood to adopt more overtly

conservative Islamic rhetoric along with violent strategies – not just to hold their

25
Salafi rivals at bay but also to make up for its abject failure to hold on to power
through appeals to democratic legitimacy. Intriguingly, further fragmentation

within the Muslim Brotherhood, which is quite possible given the crippling of its
central leadership by the Egyptian military, would result in a situation closer to

Indonesia than Turkey in terms of the varied expressions of the new Islamic

populism.

But, of course, the point for both the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafi

was to utilise democratic mechanisms to enable access to, and control over, the

state and its institutions to further the interests of the multi-class coalition

identifying with the ummah. It was against such a backdrop that protracted

conflict had earlier taken place about a new Egyptian Constitution and its

possible ‘Islamisation’, involving criticism – by an assortment of liberal, leftist

Perpustakaan SMA Negeri 2 Cibinong




and Nasserist groups, as well as Coptic Christians – of a document that was

eventually ratified in 2012 through a controversial national referendum. Much of

the criticism focussed on the Constitution’s vague language, particularly with
regard to the rights of women and minorities. The conflict was not just a matter

of ideology, however, even though this may have been suggested by the fact that

the Brotherhood and the Salafis temporarily combined against liberals and

26
leftists. Equally at stake was how an Islamic stamp on the Constitution would
by default privilege Islamic political vehicles, which then meant the Muslim

Brotherhood, and facilitate its aggressive attempt to exert hegemonic control

over the state’s material resources and coercive capacities.
That such pragmatic considerations were important in the struggle over the

Constitution is indicated in the way the powerful military was then being

placated. The document stated, for instance, that the minister of defence could

not be a civilian and that the military budget was to remain free of civilian

oversight (El-Kouedi 2013), exactly as was demanded by the top military

hierarchy. All this suggests an attempt – though ultimately unsuccessful – at an

accommodation between the Muslim Brotherhood and the military that

recognised the latter’s vast interests, including in the economy. It also indicated

that a broader process of negotiation was continuously going on behind the
scenes between the Muslim Brotherhood and interests linked to the felool in the

context of struggles with other claimants to power in post-Mubarak Egypt. This

provides some verification for the earlier assertion that the objectives of the new

Islamic populism have been far less than revolutionary (Chapter 2).

Interestingly, however, the question of putting an Islamic stamp on

Indonesia’s Constitution has hardly figured in the dynamics of electoral

competition since the fall of Soeharto. The only real exceptions were some

unproductive and half-hearted calls to return to the so-called Jakarta Charter

version of Pancasila, which enjoins Muslims to practise the requirements of their

Perpustakaan SMA Negeri 2 Cibinong




religion. These calls were made during the 2001 and 2002 sessions of the

People’s Consultative Assembly (Van Bruinessen 2002). Notwithstanding such

events, the most important constitutional debates in Indonesia about the place of
Islam within the state took place, in fact, all the way back in the 1950s (Nasution

1995), when the post-colonial state was still in its protracted process of

consolidation. 27

A major issue in Indonesia is the absence of vehicles that can credibly

claim the role of leader of such a community of the pious and marginalised. In

the electoral arena, the PKS – which remains the best expression of the new

Islamic populist tendency – faces regular competition from a range of other
Islamic parties, including the New Order-era vehicle, the PPP. Outside of it,

competitors include formidable organisations, with entrenched patronage

networks, like the NU and the Muhammadiyah. Because of its traditionally more

urban following, the latter has particularly looked at the PKS as a direct threat to

28
its grassroots bases of support, especially given that traditional families of
petty traders and commodity producers have produced many offspring who tend

to be the kind of educated middle-class professionals attracted to the PKS.

Rivals are also found among those operating at the margins of politics and

society, discussed in the previous two chapters, which see the PKS as traitors to
the Islamic cause for its willingness to engage in electoral democracy.

A further problem is that the PKS remains decidedly young and urban

middle class in much of its social base compared to its counterparts in Egypt and

Turkey. Tentative attempts to expand its social base have largely failed. For

example, party efforts to forge links with the labour movement during the 2009

Indonesian general elections were botched, with some labour activists left

believing that the PKS did not have more than superficial concern for working-
29
class issues. While the party has moved into charity and educational work to

develop followings among the urban poor, including by effectively taking

Perpustakaan SMA Negeri 2 Cibinong



30
control of existing charitable organisations, it has not done so with the aplomb
31
of its counterparts in Egypt and Turkey given limited resources. Moreover,

attempts to forge links with the big bourgeoisie, dominated by ethnic Chinese
32
Indonesians – by declaring the party open to non-Muslims – have yet to bear
fruit.

Nevertheless, PKS leaders have come to develop the argument that it is not

compulsory to rigidly and literally implement the Sharia. Instead, they tend to

suggest that Muslims can obey modern laws, including those that govern

democratic life, as long as these do not go against the spirit of God’s
33
injunctions. In other words, the party has espoused a non-literalist
understanding of scripture, notwithstanding its origins as a semi-underground

student movement set up by activists who had returned from the Middle East at a

time when Qutbist and Wahhabist tendencies had closely intermingled. In doing

so, the PKS is clearly responding to the political exigencies encountered in

democratic Indonesia, where ad hoc alliances are hardly driven by ideological

purity or even common policy agenda, even if such responses may displease

some of the party’s rank-and-file activists, including at the university campus

level, committed to the idea of an Islamic state as a way out of the morass in

which the ummah has been entangled since colonial times.
Notwithstanding such reservations, the ideological permutations within the

PKS have been rather far removed from issues of religious doctrine. They have

been driven mainly by the imperatives of operating within a democracy infested

with the practice of money politics rather than the internalisation of liberal

values. As such, they are also less related to the sort of attitudinal softening and

politically liberalising processes expected within the thesis of moderation

through democratic institutional inclusion.

Perpustakaan SMA Negeri 2 Cibinong








Democratic strategy and doctrinal rigidity



It is evident by now that the embrace of political (or economic) liberalism does

not necessarily correlate with liberal attitudes and positions in the social sphere.

Thus, it is possible to advocate democratic processes and global economic

competitiveness while holding retrogressive views on a range of social issues,

hence producing an illiberal form of democracy (Hamid: 207–208; also 188–

189). But this is not just a matter of incomplete liberal transformation. In the

case of the new Islamic populism, preserving these views is a matter of

delineating the markers of Islamic identity, something which the conception of a
homogenous ummah hinges upon, especially because of its contrast with the

reality of the increasingly diverse social bases of Islamic politics.

The AKP in Turkey, for example, reinforces the markers of religious

identity by periodically raising moral issues with reference to a huge reservoir of

socially conservative values (Buruma 2013), which serves the function of

distinguishing itself from secular and ‘immoral’ Kemalist rivals. In Indonesia,

while the PKS has presented itself as being ‘anti-establishment’ by focussing its

rhetoric on socio-economic reforms and on fighting corruption (Heiduk 2012:

37), it remains highly parochial in terms of the social values it upholds – much
34
like the AKP that provided it with inspiration. The party has thus promoted
efforts to cleanse the Internet of pornographic material while party leader Anis

Matta voices strong objections to homosexuality, even as he rhapsodises about

35
the merits of democracy and the free market. In this, his manner is similar to
Muslim Brotherhood businessman and adviser to the Morsi government Diaa
36
Farhad, who expresses the same views. Additionally, the PKS-backed

governor of West Java has supported the banning of the minority Ahmadiyah

Perpustakaan SMA Negeri 2 Cibinong




sect, thus allying himself with those, like the anti-democratic FPI, who argue

that it is heretical. 37

But there are limits to how Islamic political vehicles that have had to
actually govern modern states can resort to the sort of social conservatism that

38
relies on validation by doctrine. For running such states in a highly globalised
capitalist world ostensibly on the basis of religious precepts originating from a

seventh-century society – and one that had a relatively simple social and

economic structure – inevitably requires considerable human interpretation,

reasoning and intervention even if such efforts may be geared to purify

understandings of doctrine allegedly obfuscated by centuries of religious
‘innovation’ (Akbarzadeh 2011a: 3). Again, it matters what kind of social agents

are endowed with the capacity to undertake interpretation and enforcement, and

what their interests are, because the role can become as highly bureaucratised

and power-laden as any other. Hence, writers like Bayat (2007) emphasise how

in Iran, the Islamic Republic has had to evolve to address mundane, everyday

matters of governance, giving rise to what Zubaida, adapting Weber’s analysis

of modern capitalism, has called ‘routinisation’ (Zubaida 2000:62–65).

Still, leaders such as MMI secretary general Sobirin Syakur consistently put

their weight behind doctrinal rigidity. Criticising modern democratic precepts,
they express the belief that it is not sensible to place equal value on the vote of a

39
‘sinner’, such as a prostitute, and that of ulama. Others have even suggested
that the vote of the average person cannot be considered equal in value to that of

40
the learned cleric. In some ways these views are reminiscent of those that
existed in nineteenth-century Europe, which held that only people of high social

standing, due to their ownership of property, were deemed deserving of the vote.

Nonetheless, these are not uncontested positions, especially now that politically

active members of the ummah have become so heterogeneous in their

composition. For example, as a result of economic transformations placing more

Perpustakaan SMA Negeri 2 Cibinong




females into the workforce, they include ambitious middle-class professional

women increasingly conscious of attaining rights in the private as well as public
41
spheres. It is no wonder that even the Salafi political parties in Egypt have
agreed to the principle of women having a role in politics, though only in

seemingly half-hearted fashion (Brown 2011: 10).

But it needs to be reiterated that the significance of the ideas expressed by

religious ‘hard-liners’ in Indonesia does not lie in their content but in their

deployment against those, like the PKS or PKB, more equipped to participate

within the mechanics of democracy. For the former, the establishment of rule by

Sharia in Indonesia provides a fanciful route to the sort of society where their
continual marginalisation would be finally overcome, as it also appeared for

their political predecessors, the Islamic petty bourgeoisie of the late colonial

period. 42

By the same token, those who dissociate themselves from such a tradition

take virtually diametrically opposing views. Hence, activists linked to the

Islamic Liberal Network (JIL) argue that commitment to Islam and to universal

principles of individual freedom (Suratno 2011) – as well as the capitalist
43
economy – can coexist cosily. They do so, not surprisingly, to the chagrin of

those ensconced in the militia groups and similar organisations discussed in
previous chapters (see Fealy 2006). It is instructive that JIL activists typically

have emerged from the top ranks of Jakarta’s younger urban intellectual elites,

adroit at navigating through the intricacies of democratic political and economic

alliance building. Not having a broad social base of support of its own, JIL itself

has had to latch on to some powerful secular nationalist vehicles in the continual

absence of viable liberal ones. Its figurehead, Ulil Abshar-Abdalla, thus opted to

join the Democrat Party of former president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and is

also closely associated with the Freedom Institute, a think tank linked to

Aburizal Bakrie, a major Soeharto-era crony and the leader of the Golkar Party.

Perpustakaan SMA Negeri 2 Cibinong




Similarly liberal strands of Islamic politics have also struggled to attain

more influence in other contexts in the absence of ready-made options (Kurzman

1998). In Egypt, support for the politically liberal Islamic political party Al-
Wasat derives from younger, well-educated activists who had left the Muslim

44
Brotherhood because it had not democratised enough internally. Indeed many
Muslim Brotherhood youths voluntarily departed from the organisation soon

45
after the fall of Mubarak for the same reason. Others were expelled when they
attempted to form electoral vehicles in anticipation of the country’s first free

legislative elections, including the Egyptian Current Party, in defiance of
46
directives to support the Freedom and Justice Party. To take another example,
Al-Wasat vice president Mohamed Mahsoub had left the Muslim Brotherhood

many years before the start of the Arab Spring, after no less than two decades of

membership, due to a similar kind of disenchantment with the organisation. 47

It is also notable that some of these younger former members of the Muslim

Brotherhood had been involved in the once highly touted Kefaya movement. 48

This movement had brought together a wide range of anti-Mubarak youths of

different backgrounds in protests predating the outbreak of the Arab Spring

(Bayat 2013a: 224). For such individuals, the experience provided a rare early

opportunity to forge links with youths from outside of the close-knit Muslim
Brotherhood community. It is instructive, however, that the mainstream

leadership of the organisation tended to belittle Kefaya after Mubarak was

49
deposed. But the reason for this is clear: by that time it had developed a vested
interest in a narrative of the ‘Egyptian Revolution’ that extolled the role of the

organisation and which lent credibility to the idea that it alone deserved to rule

after decades of heroic struggle. In the end, the overly vigorous pursuit of that

narrative was inextricably linked to the Muslim Brotherhood’s undoing.

The foregoing discussion suggests that there is more to the resilience of

social conservatism within the new Islamic populism than merely intransigence

Perpustakaan SMA Negeri 2 Cibinong




on doctrinal matters. For vehicles engaging in democratic politics, the issue is

not about incomplete liberal transformations. There are other matters at stake,

such as the ability to mobilise mass support on the basis of common membership
within an unjustly deprived ummah, which in turn induces emphasis on the

markers of identity based on religious affiliation. This is so especially when

opposing elites are conceived as being made up of the secular, oppressive and

morally corrupt.

Perpustakaan SMA Negeri 2 Cibinong







The limits of Islamic party politics: Indonesia


In spite of the durability of organisations discussed in the previous chapter, the

coalescing of Islamic and democratic politics in Indonesia after the Soeharto era
should not be too surprising given that there is actually an established, though

interrupted, history of democratic Islamic politics. It should be recalled that two

Islamic politics were highly successful in Indonesia’s relatively brief 1950s

experience with parliamentary democracy, which took place when the post-

colonial state was still in its long process of formation. These were the mutually

competing Nahdlatul Ulama Party and the Masyumi Party. The experiences of

such parties no doubt present some appealing historical reference points for
today’s crop of Indonesian Islamic parties, certainly ones that can compete with

that provided by the Darul Islam rebellion. However, in the absence of broader

and coherently organised multi-class alliances to underpin them, these Islamic

parties remain unable to attain control over the state to the extent seen in recent

times in Turkey and Egypt.

It is tantalising to think, nevertheless, that things might have evolved

somewhat differently if the ICMI initiative had involved the forging of a more

seriously cross-class constituency. Celebrated during its heyday as a symbol of

reconciliation between the New Order and the ummah, ICMI was in fact merely
a vehicle to recruit new apparatchiks from the ranks of Indonesia’s newly

emerging urban middle class (Ramage 1995: 7; also see Hefner 1993), many of

whom had developed enhanced levels of religious piety. The fact that the

organisation quickly became irrelevant due to fragmentation not long after the

fall of Soeharto suggests that it had been merely glued together by New Order

patronage. It was shown to have been an utter failure when the moment of truth

came: the attempt to save the constantly besieged short presidency of B.J.

Perpustakaan SMA Negeri 2 Cibinong




Habibie, its main patron and the immediate successor to Soeharto. Rather than

serving as an effective power base for Habibie when he faced opponents outside

and within the regime (Robison and Hadiz 2004: 227–241), ICMI instead
dissolved into competing factions backing different political horses.

Nevertheless, prior to this ICMI did carry out its function as an instrument

of New Order rule quite usefully. The tensions caused by the azas tunggal

controversy and such events as the Tanjung Priok massacre were to be

significantly defused with its establishment in 1990, which provided the regime

with a belated pro-Islamic facade. ICMI also handily provided Soeharto with a

new base of support outside of the military and Golkar, extending his personal
reach, especially to Muslim NGO activists and academics that had been critical

of the New Order’s development policy (Hefner 2000). Among them were

public figures like Adi Sasono, Dawam Rahardjo, Imaduddin Abdulrachim and

also Muhammadiyah leader Amien Rais, who would later break with the New

Order again and become a leader of the 1998 anti-Soeharto movement. The

existence of ICMI even forced the critical DDII to offer qualified support for

Soeharto (Aspinall 2005: 69).

The main problem, however, remained: being thoroughly regimist at the

core, ICMI was never intended to absorb all societal elements struggling for the
advancement of the ummah; as we have seen, there was an array of such groups

that remained ‘out in the cold’. No big bourgeoisie was ever to emerge out of

ICMI either, and moreover, attempts to organise the poor through it were never

made because that would have contravened the New Order’s floating mass

politics.

ICMI only made efforts to reach out to those ‘left out in the cold’ for

opportunistic reasons, triggering new kinds of political activism within the

ummah that were focussed on such vehicles as militia organisations.

Specifically, this new activism was triggered by the mobilisation of these new

Perpustakaan SMA Negeri 2 Cibinong




militia organisations on behalf of the weak Habibie presidency in 1998–1999 – a

step made necessary because of the sheer ineffectiveness of ICMI itself in facing

competitors within the regime and new challenges, in the form of wide-ranging
student protests, outside of it. Thus, Islamic militia groups under an umbrella

organisation called Pam Swakarsa were deployed to deal with anti-Habibie

student demonstrators, in concert with the military. It was at this time that such

previously unknown figures as Habib Rizieq, leader of the feared FPI, suddenly

grew in prominence due to his sponsorship by top military and police leaders

(Jones 2013: 111).

Nonetheless, in fact a precedent had been set by Soeharto’s last-ditch
efforts to preserve his own presidency. These involved manipulating nationalist

as well as Islamic sentiment – portraying the challenge to his government as

emanating from pawns of a Western-Christian-Zionist conspiracy. In this,

Soeharto was obviously trying to capitalise on public resentment against the

IMF-sponsored structural adjustment programme imposed on Indonesia during

the Asian Crisis. An irony of history is that Soeharto, who had found the need to

incapacitate Islamic movements at the start of the New Order, actually turned to

some of their representatives for rescue during his last moments in power, albeit

ultimately to little avail.
But once Soeharto had vacated the political stage, the impetus to form new

political parties representing the ummah would come from politicians and

activists incorporated into the New Order in a number of possible ways. First,

they were among those who were cultivated within the network of patronage

being developed within ICMI during the last years of the New Order, but which

soon fragmented as the regime dissipated when Habibie failed to defend it.

Platzdach notes (2009: 62), however, that key members of ICMI did not

necessarily end up setting up overtly Islamic parties; the short-lived and

unsuccessful Partai Daulat Rakyat (People’s Sovereignty Party) was founded by

Perpustakaan SMA Negeri 2 Cibinong




the ambitious ICMI secretary general Adi Sasono, which did, nevertheless, make

use of existing ICMI networks, including among students and activists. Another

‘source’ of leadership for Islamic party politics in the early post-New Order
period was KISDI, an organisation ostensibly formed in solidarity with the plight

of Bosnian Muslims. Its leaders, such as the late former anti-Soeharto activist

Ahmad Sumargono, were instrumental in the forming of the socially

conservative PBB (Crescent and Star Party), chaired by Yusril Ihza Mahendra,

an ICMI figure and former Soeharto speech-writer. Mahendra often presents

himself – with unconcealed hubris – as heir to the revered Mohammad Natsir,

while the PBB he leads depicts itself, as mentioned in Chapter 3, as the direct
continuation of Natsir’s Masyumi.

In addition, individuals linked to either the Muhammadiyah or NU also

took a leading role in forming new Islamic-oriented parties. Illustrating the prior

accommodation they had reached with the Soeharto regime, both organisations

had regularly contributed leading figures to the PPP, which, not surprisingly

recasted itself as ‘reformist’ after 1998 too. 50

It would seem then that the parties emerging out of these entrenched and

large associations were set for considerable success. Not only did these

associations command the loyalty of sections of the ummah based on networks
of patronage that have been in place for decades, they also ran social or

educational activities which were allowed to coexist with the institutions of the

New Order. This is the case even for the period in which the NU was led by

ICMI opponent Abdurrahman Wahid, who was closely associated in the 1990s

with pro-democracy tendencies that incorporated a range of liberals and

disenchanted former regimists within the so-called Democracy Forum (see

Robison and Hadiz 2004: 128–129).

Wahid would go on to establish a party based on the support of rural clerics

belonging to the NU, the PKB, and even managed a short and turbulent stint in

Perpustakaan SMA Negeri 2 Cibinong




the presidency (1999–2001). His erstwhile ally but much more frequent foe from

the Muhammadiyah, Amien Rais, would form another party, the National

Mandate Party (PAN). It is telling, however, that both parties came to emphasise
their nationalist and inclusive credentials – as seen in their appellations – almost

as much as their Islamic ones, partly by absorbing secular intellectual and

activist figures. On one level, this may be seen as a conscious attempt to avoid

outright sectarian politics. On another level, though, it showed awareness of the

limits of a strictly ummah-based political strategy. It certainly appeared that

leaders were conscious that their organisations fell far short of the coherence,

discipline and mobilisation capacities of something like the Egyptian Muslim
Brotherhood. Importantly, Hicks (2012) has shown too that parties associated

with the NU and Muhammadiyah have been disadvantaged by reductions in state

subsidies provided during the New Order, and which helped to run their social

and educational activities.

Still, some of the most intriguing developments were taking place just

beyond conventional elite politics. The PKS offered a somewhat different model

in that the party was almost wholly underpinned by student groupings that had

been semi-clandestinely cultivated within the Tarbiyah movement, initiated by a

small collection of activists that had returned from studies in the Middle East
51
and had been engaged with Muslim Brotherhood exiles. It was significant,
therefore, that the Muslim Brotherhood had exercised growing influence by this

time outside of Egypt itself, largely because many of its members had been

forced to seek refuge in other countries due to Nasserist repression in the 1960s.

In Saudi Arabia, in particular, what transpired was a meeting of Wahhabist

doctrinal rigidity and Muslim Brotherhood organisational capacity among the

diaspora strewn across the Middle East. It was this historic combination that

rippled through the Tarbiyah movement and eventually produced the PK and

then the PKS in Indonesia. Like its counterparts in the Middle East, the Tarbiyah

Perpustakaan SMA Negeri 2 Cibinong




traditionally has had significant rank-and-file support among students of

engineering and among similar disciplines found in secular institutions of higher
52
learning. Such students have remained among some of the most reliable of the
movement’s foot soldiers during election campaigns, ensuring votes especially

from a significant portion of pious elements within the urban middle class.

That the Tarbiyah movement was to be influenced greatly by the Muslim

Brotherhood – as seen in the copying of its cell-based clandestine structure – is

not surprising. Like their model, Tarbiyah activists once had to cope with an

authoritarian state that had a repeatedly proven capacity for sheer brutality.

Furthermore, the Muslim Brotherhood had already given birth to ‘branches’ in
numerous Muslim majority countries – and developed followings in European

ones where immigrant populations from the Middle East and North Africa could

be found. In Southeast Asia, ABIM (the Malaysian Islamic Youth Movement) –

which produced future deputy prime minister and later opposition leader Anwar

Ibrahim – was an important conveyor of Muslim Brotherhood ideas in the 1970s

53
(Hamid 2009: 145–147). As pointed out earlier, it was a vital contact point for
the highly influential Salman Mosque-Bandung Institute of Technology activist

and lecturer Imaduddin Abdulrachim.

Yet it is self-evident that all of these Islamic parties have fared quite poorly
in Indonesia. This was not happenstance, for it must be recalled that many of

these parties quickly developed mutual animosity because of the defining logic

of Indonesian democracy that was hardly conducive to countering fragmentation

within the politics of the ummah. Within this logic, each Islamic political party

claiming to represent the interests of the community of believers actually

represents competing patronage networks within Indonesia’s money politics-

dominated electoral democracy.

Thus, vehicles that Alamsyah (2013) calls ‘pure’ Islamic parties – including

the PKS – only garnered 18 per cent of the total vote in the 2004 elections. Five

Perpustakaan SMA Negeri 2 Cibinong




years later, all Islamic parties – if more broadly defined to include the PKB and

PAN, which have emphasised their nationalist credentials almost as much as

their religious ones – only received about a quarter of the total votes. The PKS
has been marginally the star performer, winning between 7 and 8 per cent of the

votes in both general elections, supplementing their results with victories in

gubernatorial races in West Java in 2008 and in West Sumatera in 2010

(Alamsyah 2013). These outcomes clearly pale in comparison to the

approximately half of the vote won by the AKP and half the seats won by the

FJP, in general elections respectively taking place in 2011 and in 2011–2012.
54
Such failure, which would be replicated in the 2014 general elections – but
with the PKS losing some ground – ultimately, highlights the comparative

incapacity of the new Islamic populism in Indonesia to develop coherently and

effectively organised multi-class support bases for its political vehicles.

Perpustakaan SMA Negeri 2 Cibinong








Conclusion



Not surprisingly, the Arab Spring reignited old debates about whether the

guiding principles of Islam are inherently incompatible with democracy or

mutable enough to accommodate politics without an overtly exclusionary

Islamic state (see Berman 2013; Jones, S.G. 2013). Such debates are inseparable

from the question of whether political inclusion within democratic institutions

would result in the internalisation of liberal and pluralist values among Islamic

political actors.

This chapter, however, has explored the intricacies of the new Islamic
populism’s encounter with democratic politics in a way that suggests

complexities going beyond the fairly simple thesis of political moderation

through democratic inclusion. It confirms that acceptance of democratic politics

is contingent on the position of those struggling for the social, economic and

political advancement of an ummah imagined to be unified through the

experience of systemic and historically rooted marginalisation. The analysis of

the new Islamic populist tendency shows that the relationship with democracy

can fluctuate according to specific circumstances encountered in the terrain of

political struggle. Of all the cases considered, the Egyptian one is perhaps the
most intriguing in this regard given the failure of the Muslim Brotherhood to

maintain power in spite of early spectacular successes through the democratic

route. 55

The chapter has also underlined the importance of the presence or absence

of well-organised political vehicles that can claim to represent the ummah as a

whole with credibility and forcefulness. This has been the case for the AKP in

Turkey for most of its time in power, but less so for Egypt partly because of the

Perpustakaan SMA Negeri 2 Cibinong




Salafist challenge to the Muslim Brotherhood’s claims. Indonesia’s money

politics-dominated democracy, however, has clearly further exacerbated

historically already existing fragmentation within Islamic politics. Hence, it is
more difficult in this case for the new Islamic populist tendency to successfully

navigate through the democratic terrain in the absence of broad-enough social

bases as well as coherent political vehicles that can lock in the allegiance of a

sociologically diverse ummah.


1
Tomsa (2012: 491–493) suggests that one effect has been growing
factionalism within the Islamic party, the PKS, spurred by changes designed

to make it more appealing to non-Muslims. Significantly, rather than simply a
bid to gain a wider potential voter base, the move appears to be aimed at

courting the support of elements of the wealthy Chinese big bourgeoisie,
obviously lying outside of the ummah. Interview with Anis Matta, who was

soon to be appointed president of the PKS, 28 January 2013.


2
Trager (2013) quotes Mohammed Al-Beltagy, a senior Muslim Brotherhood
leader, thus: ‘There is a part of the system that, until now, is still connected
with the old regime … This is found in many of the [state] apparatuses, like

the police, media, and judiciary.’


3 Quite incredibly, among these leaders was Supreme Guide Mohamed Badia,

who was untouched even during the Mubarak regime. Besides Morsi, also
detained was Badia’s powerful deputy, the businessman Khairat El-Shater, as

mentioned earlier. By contrast, Mubarak was placed under house arrest in an

army hospital.


4 See, for example, Hauslohner (2013).


5 See ‘Court Postpones Retrial of Egypt Steel Tycoon Ezz’ 2013.



6 See ‘Egypt Court Bans All Brotherhood Activities’ 2013.

Perpustakaan SMA Negeri 2 Cibinong




7 Morocco did not really have an Arab Spring save for some relatively muted

protests. Nevertheless the PJD – Justice and Development Party (with links to

both the Muslim Brotherhood and the AKP) – has benefited most from the
limited political liberalisation undertaken by the King since then and actively
collaborates with the monarchy. Interviews with Hami El Din and with

Abdeslam Ballaji, both PJD members of the Moroccan parliament, Rabat,

respectively 23 and 24 April 2013.


8 In Egypt, for example, interview with George Ishak, Egyptian Coptic

politician and former Kifaya co-founder, Cairo, 31 March 2012. For him, the
Muslim Brotherhood had an Islamist agenda that constituted no less than a

counter-revolution (to the one that deposed Mubarak). Also, interview with
Abdelmonaem Emam, secretary general of the politically liberal El Adl Party,

Cairo, 13 December 2014. For him, the choice available to Egypt in mid-
2013, when Morsi was deposed, was either a military-dominated state under

General Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi or a theocratic one, which he believed the
Muslim Brotherhood was plotting to bring to the country.


9 Interview with Samir Cheffi, deputy secretary general of UGTT, Tunis, 16

April 2013. For him, it was the Left and the trade unions that had fought the

anti-colonial struggle in Tunisia and built the modern state, even as they
entered into conflicts with Habib Bourguiba, the country’s first president and

strongman. According to Cheffi, En Nahda is descended from Islamists who
only emerged in the 1970s, cultivated by the holders of state power at the time

to fight the Left. Interview with Ahmed Naguib, self-described leftist and
former spokesman of the Egyptian Current Party, Cairo, 13 December 2014.

Commenting on the military-dominated politics of Egypt after the fall of
Mohamed Morsi, he was resigned to the fact that political liberals and leftists

had no weight but received solace from the idea that the values of the
‘revolution’ of 2011 – which he says was a response to neoliberalism – would

be transmitted to newer generations.

Perpustakaan SMA Negeri 2 Cibinong




10 See ‘The Odatv and Ergenekon Cases’ 2012 and ‘One Suspect Released in

Oda TV Case’ 2012.


11 Among the protesters were supporters of the CHP, the ultra-nationalist

MHP, as well as the Kurdish movement. However, the main driving force of

the Gezi protests were the more than one hundred organisations that were
organised under the umbrella of a loose association called Taksim Solidarity.

Interview with Cihan Uzunçarşılı Baysal, Taksim Solidarity activist, Istanbul,
21 August 2013.

The Kurdish movement hesitated to be fully involved because of the
presence of such actors as the CHP and MHP and the possibility that the

protests would be abused by the military. Interview with Mehdi Perincek,
Diyarbakir, 26 August 2013, senior official of the BDP (Peace and

Democracy Party) – the Kurdish movement’s political party represented in
parliament.



12 ‘Perda’ is short for peraturan daerah, or local by-law.


13 Some of these have even been revoked by the central government. See

Gatra (2012) for some elaboration.


14 Interview with Wasidi Swastomo, regent of Cianjur in 2001–2006, 7 July

2012, in Bogor, West Java.


15 See ‘Ribuan Pejabat Daerah Terlibat Kasus Korupsi’ 2013.



16 An infamous case is that of the Yasmin Church in Bogor, which remained
shut down due to the activities of groups that claim to represent the interests

of Muslims in the neighbourhood surrounding it. The mayor of the city has
supported their actions. Interview with Ari Prabowo, Forkami (Forum

Komunikasi Muslim) and Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia activist, Cimanggu, Bogor,

21 January 2013.

Perpustakaan SMA Negeri 2 Cibinong




17 Nevertheless, the tendency to produce the so-called perda Sharia seems to

have peaked by about 2007 (see Bush 2008), indicating that they have not

been unambiguously successful in mobilising support for local governments
that enact them.


18
See ‘Elections Violate Islamic Law: Egypt’s Mohamed El-Zawahiri’ 2013.


19
Discussion with Abubakar Ba’asyir, founder of Jemaah Anshorut Tauhid
(JAT), Jakarta Police Headquarters cell blocks, Jakarta, 6 July 2012.


20 Munabari (2010: 177) cites a Lebanese-Australian Hizbut Tahrir figure,

Abdurrahman Al-Baghdadi, as the most instrumental person in the early
process of establishing an Indonesian branch of the organisation. This process

began with the recruitment of students at the highly respected Bogor Institute
of Agriculture (IPB) into this fledgling branch.


21 One leading member of the party even dismisses debate about how

democratic participation may be philosophically contradictory to Islam by

saying that it could be the subject of ‘endless discussion in universities’.
Interview with Mohamed Nour, Al-Nour Party spokesman and International

Relations Coordinator, Cairo, 1 April 2012.


22 Interview with Mohamed Afan, Egyptian Current Party co-founder, Cairo,

28 March 2012.


23 Interview with Mohamed Nour, Al-Nour Party spokesman and owner of

Nourayn multimedia company, Cairo, 1 April 2012.


24 Interview with Mohamed Nour, Al-Nour Party spokesman and owner of

Nourayn multimedia company, Cairo, 1 April 2012.


25 A similar situation is faced by Tunisia’s En Nahda, which is sometimes

pressured by small local Salafi groupings to prove it has not lost its Islamic

Perpustakaan SMA Negeri 2 Cibinong




credentials (Alexander 2012).


26 See ‘Egypt Opposition Says Islamists Trying to Stifle Dissent’ 2012.


27 More recent debates in Turkey have also been related, though more

obliquely, to the question of how an amended Constitution would

accommodate ostensibly Islamic ideals. Initially, the focus was rather
predictably on whether the AKP would try to place a stronger Islamic imprint

on the Constitution, particularly after the party overwhelmingly won a
referendum in 2010 that allowed for new amendments. See Kalaycıoğlu

(2010).
Interestingly, however, the main issue eventually shifted to the desirability

of altering the existing parliamentary system to a presidential one, which
would potentially allow AKP leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan to continue to

wield real power from that position once he was no longer prime minister. See
‘Parliament to Make Last-Ditch Charter Bid’ 2012.


28 Interview with Marpuji Ali, head of the Central Java Muhammadiyah, Solo,

28 July 2010; and Haedar Nashir, head of the Muhammadiyah’s-cadre

forming activities, Yogyakarta, 22 July 2010.


29
Interview with M. Iqbal, chair of the Federation of Metalworkers’ Unions
(FSPMI), Jakarta, 30 December 2010; Siti Arifah, National Workers’ Union
(SPN), Tangerang, 4 January 2011. Also interview with Bambang Wiroyoso,

chairman of the SPN, Jakarta, 5 January 2011.


30 Interview with Ahmad Juwaini, executive director of Dompet Dhuafa,

Jakarta, 28 December 2011. On schools initiated by PKS activists see Hefner
(2009a: 73–78). Catering mostly to the middle class and lower middle class,

Hefner notes that the curriculum of these schools cannot differ so much from
that of the Ministry of Education. This is not only due to government pressure

but also because their students generally have aspirations of going to state

universities to ensure prospects of upward social mobility.

Perpustakaan SMA Negeri 2 Cibinong





31 Interview with Makmur Muhammad, chief organiser of PKS charitable

activities in Solo, Solo, 11 July 2011.


32 Interview with Anis Matta, president and former secretary general of the
PKS, Jakarta, 28 January 2013.



33 Interview with Anis Matta, president and former secretary general of the

PKS, Jakarta, 28 January 2013; and Rama Pratama, PKS Economic Section,
14 July 2010.


34 Blocking pornographic sites was a pet project of Tifatul Sembiring, a senior

PKS leader who served as minister of communications and informatics in the

SBY government. See ‘Tifatul: Pornografi Rusak Lima Sel Otak’, Republika
Online, 2 March 2014; Interview with Anis Matta, Jakarta, 28 January 2013.


35 Interview with Anis Matta, Jakarta, 28 January 2013.



36 Interview, Cairo, 4 April 2011.


37 The governor, Ahmad Heryawan, was to reiterate his support when running

for election in 2013. See ‘Gubernur Jabar Siap Bubarkan Ahmadiyah’,

Republika Online, 2 March 2011.


38 Interview with Rached Ghannoucchi, founder of the Tunisian En Nahda

Party, Tunis, 18 April 2013. While underscoring that Islam is amenable to
human rights, the market economy and equality of the sexes, he admits that

governing has meant a process of experimentation, especially with regard to
issues of eradicating corruption and establishing healthier state–business

relations.


39 Interview, Solo, 17 July 2007.

Perpustakaan SMA Negeri 2 Cibinong




40 Interview with Sudirman Marsudi, DDII Central Java branch leader, Solo,

19 July 2007; and with Sahbana, secretary general of the Alliance of North

Sumatran Islamic Organisations, Medan, 22 September 2013.


41 Interview with Mersni Sana, En Nahda member of Tunisian Constituent

Assembly, Tunis, 18 April 2013. An academic, she claims that forty-four
members of the assembly representing En Nahda are women.


42 Thus, Sahbana, a dentist by profession and secretary general of the Alliance

of North Sumatran Islamic Mass Organisations, suggests that rule by Sharia

would resolve the issue of the continuing ‘economic hegemony’ of the ethnic
Chinese community. Interview, Medan, 22 September 2013.



43 See Abshar-Abdalla (2011, 2012).


44 Interview with Yamen Nouh and Mohammad Ad-Dakhakni, Al-Wasat

Youth Committee members, Cairo, 21 March 2011.


45 Interview with Abdel Rahman Ayyash, former Muslim Brotherhood Youth

member and computer science university student, Cairo, 23 March 2011.


46
Interview with Mohamed Afan, Cairo, 28 March 2011. A lecturer at the
Faculty of Medicine, Ain Shams University, he had been a member of the
Muslim Brotherhood since 1991. He would later help found the Egyptian

Current Party, which embraced critical Islamists as well as some liberals and
leftists.



47 Interview, Cairo, 2 April 2012. A noted legal scholar, Mahsoub
nevertheless served on the committee charged with moulding Egypt’s new

Constitution and briefly in the Muslim Brotherhood-dominated cabinet,
although he had withdrawn well before the Morsi government was

overthrown.

Perpustakaan SMA Negeri 2 Cibinong




48 ‘Kefaya’ is often written with an exclamation point after the actual word –

thus Kefaya! – in the transliteration from the Arabic word meaning ‘enough’.


49 Interview, Khaled Hamza, head of Muslim Brotherhood Media Bureau,

Cairo, 29 March 2011. Hamza emphasised how each component of Kefaya

has returned to its own grouping, and that they now have very little to do with
each other.


50 Interview with Lukman Hakim Syaifuddin, PPP politician, deputy chair of

the Indonesian People’s Consultative Assembly (MPR) and, later, minister of

religion, Jakarta, 12 July 2010.


51 Interview with Jusuf Supendi, co-founder of Justice Party and of Tarbiyah

movement, Jakarta, 6 July 2011. Supendi subsequently fell out with the
leadership of the movement, however, and is a vigorous critic of the PKS.


52 Interview with Arif Munandar, Tarbiyah researcher and activist, Depok, 14

July 2011. In addition, he suggests that many Tarbiyah cadres originate from

such institutions as the elite State School of Accounting (STAN), explaining
that accountants and engineers both find appeal in the precisely defined truths

offered by religion because of their fields of study.


53 A movement in the late 1970s to promote the donning of head coverings

(jilbab) by females was initiated at the Istiqomah Mosque in Bandung, an
important node of anti-New Order resistance at the time. A similar one

undertaken by ABIM in Malaysia apparently inspired the movement.

Interview with Bambang Pranggono and Syarif Hidayat, Istiqomah Mosque
activists, Bandung, 14 July 2012.


54 See the data provided in the next chapter.



55 Though as yet unprovable, there is a sense among the Egyptian

intelligentsia that certain sections of the Muslim Brotherhood have already

Perpustakaan SMA Negeri 2 Cibinong




resorted to violent acts from the Sinai to Cairo. There is also suspicion that
they were responsible for numerous acts of sabotage of electric power grids in

Egypt in 2014 to discredit the Al-Sisi government. Interview with Amira
Howeidy, deputy editor-in-chief, Al-Ahram Weekly newspaper, Cairo, 17

December 2014.

Perpustakaan SMA Negeri 2 Cibinong















8



Navigating through neoliberalism





◈


A pathway to power?

Like the relationship between Islam and democracy, the relationship between

Islam and capitalism has been a theme explored by succeeding generations of

scholars. A varied group has come to critique the oft-made Weberian claim that

the two are inherently incompatible due to cultural practices deriving from well-

entrenched Islamic religious precepts that tend to create obstacles to private

capital accumulation. Such scholars have done so from starkly dissimilar

theoretical starting points: Rodinson (1966 [2007]), for example, explored this

theme from a perspective steeped in the Marxist tradition of social and historical

analysis, while Nasr (2009) more recently delved into it on the basis of
neoliberal assumptions about the benefits of globalisation for those who engage

1
with it. Rudnyckyj (2010), by contrast, shows convergences between Islam and
capitalism in Indonesia and elsewhere in the developing world through

ethnographic analysis, especially with regard to developing workplace ethics and

practices in modern firms. With references to religious values, these are geared

to instil workers’ self-discipline, sense of responsibility and, according to

Rudnyckyj, to better prepare them for adaptation to the requirements of working
in a globalised neoliberal economy.

Perpustakaan SMA Negeri 2 Cibinong




The position taken in this book, however, reinforces an alternative view that

there is nothing innate about the relationship between the purveyors of the

Islamic religion and support for or rejection of various forms of capitalism and
immersion in global markets. In this chapter, the theme is explored more

specifically in connection with the shaping of new Islamic populist tendencies in

Indonesia, as well as in Turkey and Egypt, particularly with regard to the

inevitable requirement of navigating through existing constellations of power

and interest.

It is shown that, like the relationship with democracy examined in the

previous chapter, there is a great deal of contingency involved in the link
between the evolution of the new Islamic populism and receptiveness to

neoliberal globalisation. Once more, rather than just moral precepts, it is the

broader context that moulds the responses of the social agents of Islamic populist

politics towards capitalism and global markets. From this point of view, an

important aspect of the problem is whether new Islamic populist alliances are

strongly supported by capitalist elements that are well positioned to compete

successfully in global markets and whether they can be conceived as being part

of a broader ummah that had been systematically marginalised by past rulers of

secular nationalist states. Furthermore, it matters whether the adoption of
economically globalising strategies by the purveyors of the new Islamic

populism is both viable and useful in the effort to establish their ascendancy.

Though the relationship between democratisation and the growth of

capitalism, including in its neoliberal manifestation, is surely complex, it is clear

that Muslim-majority societies like Indonesia, Egypt and Turkey have all

experienced struggles over democratisation that are not independent of conflict

over the distribution of wealth and power. Indeed, the struggle over the

outcomes of political change ultimately cannot be separated from conflicts about

the kinds of social interests that would be best positioned to take advantage of

Perpustakaan SMA Negeri 2 Cibinong




potential accompanying changes in the way that the economy is organised.

These conflicts may involve a range of social agents residing within both the

state apparatus and private business as well within broader civil society.
Particular institutions within the state, such as the military in the cases at hand,

can be prominently involved in these struggles due to the lingering influence of

specific historical legacies.

Hanieh (2006) argues, however, that democratisation has been but the

handmaiden of neoliberal globalisation in the Middle East. In his view, the

promotion of democracy (Wittes 2008) is mainly suited to the interests of global

capitalist interests and their allies within international development organisations
and Western governments. These, he suggests, require only the facade of

electoral politics in the Middle East to validate policies that harshly treat the

poor and continually side with the already rich and powerful in the world.

But this sort of neat correspondence between democracy and the facilitation

of neoliberal globalisation is surely too simplistic. It assumes that there are no

sufficiently powerful and autonomous domestic social forces able to make use of

democratisation as a means of advancing their own interests. In Hanieh’s type of

analysis, there is little room for domestic social forces that may be, in fact,

hindered by state authoritarianisms closely intertwined with non-transparent
links between big business and the managers of the state. However, this is the

way that much of the Anatolian bourgeoisie, for example, saw its situation in

Turkey for much of the period before the advent of AKP rule in Turkey.

What is certain is that the advent of structural adjustment policies across

much of the Muslim world, which typically include the reduction of public

spending and the privatisation of state functions, has significantly influenced the

social and political terrain within which Islamic populism has evolved around

the globe. In specific circumstances they might create the impetus for more

thorough engagement with the processes of neoliberal globalisation.

Perpustakaan SMA Negeri 2 Cibinong




Significantly, market competition based on transparency and ‘good governance’

can be promoted as an antidote to the cronyism and corruption that Islamic

political vehicles often profess to be against given their overt emphasis on
safeguarding the moral quality of society. Such a propensity would be

reinforced, furthermore, if cronyism and corruption have been evidently

detrimental to economic interests associated with the ummah. 2

It is therefore important to recall that the narrative of the ummah has

evolved through the social memory of a collective experience of economic

marginalisation going all the way back to the age of Western colonial

domination, as explained in Chapter 3. When new nation states with their
modernisation programmes emerged within the Muslim world, and new major

economic players began to develop alongside them, within and outside of the

apparatus of the state, the experience became infused in debates about arresting

the further decline of the traditional Islamic petty bourgeoisie (Chapter 4).

Hence, in Indonesia we saw the failed push to have the state play a major role in

promoting the economic fortunes of businesses connected to pribumi-Muslim

businesspeople. We also have alluded in earlier parts of this book to the aversion

of major Islamic political leaders, such as Al-Banna in Egypt and Erbakan in

Turkey – and some leaders of Indonesia’s Sarekat Islam – to Western-dominated
capitalism but not necessarily to capitalism as such. Nevertheless, we also know

that some of the protectionist discourse traditionally associated with Islamic

political movements of the twentieth century has been eroded subsequently by

greater receptiveness to free market competition by some of their social agents.

This sort of transformation has been most prominent in Turkey where big

Anatolian-based business groups have come increasingly to the fore since the

Özal-era economic reforms and particularly under AKP rule. In Egypt, a similar

attraction began developing within some business groups nurtured by the

Muslim Brotherhood before the military-led coup against the Morsi government

Perpustakaan SMA Negeri 2 Cibinong




in 2013 struck a huge blow against their globalising dreams. From this point of

view, Gumuscu (2010) was not quite correct when he claimed that an

independent and pious bourgeoisie existed in Turkey but was absent in Egypt.
As Tuğal (2012) points out, such bourgeoisie may have been comparatively

less prominent in Egypt because of its association with the Muslim Brotherhood,

which has had to exist as an underground movement for most of its political life.

̆
Tugal also suggests that the bourgeois attraction to neoliberalism, and to
democratic politics, in Turkey has been due to the close association of a

culturally Islamic faction to a strong and practically monolithic vehicle of

Islamic politics, the AKP. He suggests too that the same kind of confident
assertion of such ideals has been hindered in Egypt because Islamic politics

could not afford the same kind of political protection to big businesses emerging

̆
from within Islamic networks and groupings. Tugal (2012: 34) refers specifically
to political weaknesses arising from competition between the Muslim

Brotherhood and various Salafi-related vehicles discussed in previous chapters

of this book.

̆
It is notable that Tugal’s observation can be easily transposed to Indonesia,
where nothing approaching the Muslim Brotherhood, let alone the AKP, has

existed at least since the end of the short golden age of the Sarekat Islam. It
should not be surprising, therefore, that there exists in Indonesia a range of anti-

democratic political vehicles dreaming of the day they might be rescued from

political marginality by an Islamic state. It is no wonder too that businesses

emerging out of the ummah here speak more hesitatingly (than in Egypt or

Turkey) about the virtues of competition within neoliberal globalisation as

opposed to a long-awaited benevolent state that would protect their interests.

Nevertheless, writers like Nasr have been making the argument that

‘capitalism is alive and thriving’ in the Middle East with great enthusiasm –

referring to the ‘signs of it everywhere’ (Nasr 2009: 13). For him, these signs

Perpustakaan SMA Negeri 2 Cibinong




include everything from earnest efforts among businessmen to protect their

property rights to the staggering rise in consumption levels that have made

possible the erection of giant malls across the Muslim world, from Istanbul to
Dubai and all the way to Kuala Lumpur. Throughout his book, he is keen to

highlight an entrepreneurial spirit and an attraction to the profane among the

pious that are plainly not out of step with the imperatives of global competition.

However, one should not get carried away with this sort of linear narrative,

for it is also clear that the neoliberalising impulse is not always all-powerful. The

impulse may be tempered, for example, by the necessity to address the economic

interests of powerful institutions, such as well-established state-and quasi state-
owned companies or that of the military, all of which have been prominent in

Turkey and Egypt as well as in Indonesia. In this connection, it is useful to retain

the emphasis on contingency in the discussion. If differences in responses to

neoliberalisation (say in Indonesia and Turkey) are largely attributable to the

absence or presence of significant elements of the bourgeoisie within their

respective manifestations of new Islamic populist politics, then it is necessary to

further examine the implications for navigating through the relevant

constellations of power.

Perpustakaan SMA Negeri 2 Cibinong








The challenge of neoliberal reform



It has been mentioned that aversion to Western-dominated capitalism, whether

on the basis of its ‘unethical’ nature or premised on the need to offer protection

to the traditional Muslim petty bourgeoisie, might have been expected to be the

default stance taken by the social agents of Islamic populism. But more than this,

there is also the assumption that the ‘populist’ label would connote opposition as

well to ‘market-oriented’ institutional arrangements of economic life. As

discussed in Chapter 2, ‘irrational’ economic policy opposed to the ‘rationality’

of the market is often thought to lie at the heart of populist governments.
However, it was also pointed out that a ‘neoliberal’ form of populism had

previously emerged in Latin America, where the Menem government in

Argentina, for example, embarked on a ‘populist road to market reform’. This

form of populist politics was premised on the weakening of pre-existing

corporatist organisations and the management of a shift towards neoliberal

economic policy made possible by bringing together business and labour groups

– both based on new internationally competitive economic sectors –into a newly

developed social alliance (Gibson 1997: 355–356). In other words, just as

affinity with the Islamic religion may not necessarily signal a rejection of free-
market capitalism for reasons of morality, populist politics too is capable of

similar adaptations in spite of its typically egalitarian rhetoric.

Once more, however, it is the case of Iran, lying outside of the main focus

of this book, which provides some illuminating clues about the way in which the

factor of contingency can work concretely to override doctrinal issues. In the

early years of the Islamic Republic, and under the influence of the ideas of Ali

Shariati and his disciples, the rhetoric of class struggle appeared to mesh with

Perpustakaan SMA Negeri 2 Cibinong




more traditional Islamic references to social justice favoured by those closer to

Khomeini’s inner circle. This is not surprising given the prior discussion of the

varied social bases of the Iranian Revolution in Chapter 4. But clearly there was
no real conception about how Islamic morality would be put into practice within

a new economic system notionally siding with the good and the pious that felt

oppressed and marginalised under the rule of the Shah and by his economic

modernisation programme.

In the words of Nomani and Behdad (2006: 1), ‘The Islamic state, with

fictitiously lofty goals, began its quest for an Islamic utopia, with a hitherto

undefined Islamic economic system.’ However, according to these same authors,
the burden of the war with Iraq and the fall of international oil prices eventually

signalled a new phase in the economic policies of the Islamic Republic. By the

late 1980s, the policies were aimed at structural adjustment and economic

liberalisation involving the removal of price controls, subsidies, privatisation and

currency devaluation typically counselled by international development

organisations like the IMF. Nomani and Behdad also view the rise of

Ahmadinejad in 2005 as representing a partial backlash against the social and

economic consequences of such policies, put forward by the governments of

Rafsanjani and Khatami. It also signified the reassertion of the power of the so-
called bonyad – parastatal foundations in control of large business

conglomerates – that had grown in wealth and power soon after the Iranian

Revolution (Nomani and Behdad 2006: 36, 61–62).

In Indonesia, pressures for economic liberalisation also became acutely felt

following the drastic fall of international oil prices in the 1980s. It resulted in a

period characterised by export-led industrialisation based on labour-intensive

manufacturing, the opening up of the trade and financial sectors, privatisation

and greater encouragement of foreign investment (Robison and Hadiz 1993). But

some of these same policies would later contribute to the extreme gravity of

Perpustakaan SMA Negeri 2 Cibinong




Indonesia’s Asian Economic Crisis in the late 1990s. For instance, the

deregulation of the banking sector in the late 1980s had allowed for the

proliferation of banks that essentially served as a source of cheap capital for the
same politically well-connected business conglomerates that had established

them. In addressing the economic crisis, Indonesia had to cope with IMF

conditions for assistance, which included yet another raft of structural

adjustment policies, including cut-backs on state subsidies, as well as

encouragement of further privatisation and a more investment-friendly climate,

in addition to another set of financial sector reforms (see Robison and Hadiz

2004: Chapter 8).
In Egypt, economic reforms began under Sadat, who declared in 1974 that

the country required infitah, liberalisation, in order to battle the inefficiency of a

bloated public sector and to encourage private investment, especially from the

newly cash-rich Gulf countries. However, this effort was stalled by the food riots

of 1977, which saw large-scale protests against price increases due to the lifting

of state subsidies. It has been noted earlier that Sadat’s ad hoc alliance with the

Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamic groupings against the Left dissipated

under these circumstances, leading to the president’s eventual assassination. A

new economic liberalisation push was heralded in the mid-1980s, however,
when the Mubarak government was forced to seek assistance from the IMF, the

World Bank and various international creditors to address crippling domestic

and international debt. More structural adjustment came following the first Gulf

War, accompanying the debt relief that was extended to the country in return for

its support for the Allied cause against Saddam Hussein. These included policies

to facilitate the privatisation of state companies, new tax laws and the revocation

of redistributive land regulations that had been put in place under Nasser (Owen

2004: 115–117).

Perpustakaan SMA Negeri 2 Cibinong




Faced with severe balance-of-payments problems in the late 1970s, Turkey

too had undertaken an economic liberalisation programme, which only gathered

steam however under the Özal government of the 1980s that was supported by
the military as well as the community of international development

organisations. Its policies prominently included macroeconomic reforms geared

to encourage exports and curb reliance on import substitution industries.

Government austerity was encouraged too, as was the clearing of hurdles to

foreign investment. In a related development, Turkey’s military leaders took

stronger measures to smash the power of leftist trade unions, which contributed

to the development of a domestic cost structure that enabled industries to
compete in the burgeoning markets of the Middle East and to make concerted

inroads into Europe. In addition, more economic liberalisation policies were put

in place in the wake of yet another economic crisis in 2001. This time the target

was a decrepit banking sector, which had been used to funnel funds to politically

well-connected businesses, eroding public confidence and causing a massive run

on the banks as well as the drastic devaluation of the Turkish lira (Owen 2004:

123–125). Such an experience recalled some aspects of the crisis that had

wreaked havoc on Indonesia’s economy just a few years earlier. Like the

Indonesian government before it, the AKP-led Turkish government worked
closely with the IMF in handling this crisis (Dagi 2013: 97–98).

Perpustakaan SMA Negeri 2 Cibinong








The Muslim response



In this connection, it is particularly significant that Islamic organisational

vehicles in Indonesia, Turkey and Egypt did not mount concerted opposition to

these economically liberalising reforms, for example, on the basis of the

presumed moral depredations of capitalism. As mentioned, the AKP in Turkey

in fact presided over close collaboration with the IMF and other international

development institutions to solve the Turkish economic crisis it inherited upon

coming to power. Perhaps all this is not so surprising given Tripp’s (2006)

observation that there has always been a great deal of adaptability in the way that
Islamic scholars have dealt with the dictates of the modern capitalist economy.

The most prominent example of such adaptability is probably shown in new

ways of treating ‘usury’ to permit the development of a highly globalised and

increasingly profitable world of ‘Islamic banking’ that is attractive to the pious.

Islamic banking is appealing not only to religiously inclined individuals but also

to business groups emerging out of Islamic networks, partly because it enables

access to global financial markets with minimal costs in terms of the flaunting of

religious identity. 3

That such considerable malleability exists stands to reason if the battle over
economic and political governance in Muslim-majority societies is more than

about ideas and values, but also about the furtherance of the social position and

interests of their bearers. In this regard, it is significant that there is no single

institution in the Islamic world that has intrinsic monopoly over doctrinal

interpretation and with the capacity to enforce it. This is in spite of the exalted

position of Al-Azhar ulama in Egypt, the Shia clergy in Iran or of the claims to

authority on religious matters made by the Indonesian Council of Ulama (MUI)

Perpustakaan SMA Negeri 2 Cibinong




– which has little basis actually because it was initially created as a mere

instrument of control over the ummah under the New Order (Porter 2002: 47).

Tripp (2006: 142–149) also suggests, however, that such adaptability has
meant the infusion of the logic of global finance into banking sub-sectors

ostensibly runs according to religious injunctions but is equally driven by profit

and the necessity of competition for clients. Although catering to a niche market

made up of the economically well off and pious, the difference between

conventional and Islamic banking has therefore become increasingly blurred. So

rather than challenging global capitalism, Islamic banking has instead ‘shown

that the practices of global capitalism, whatever its origins or initially disruptive
effects, can be incorporated into the world of meaning that is validated by

reference to distinctive Islamic idioms’ (Tripp 2006: 149; also see Halliday

2012: 216).

This sort of doctrinal elasticity has been clearly tied to the efforts by

culturally Islamic businesspeople to seek out new roles other than of the

traditional ‘victims’ of global capitalism. Nasr (2009), therefore, extols the role

of a new generation of Islamic entrepreneurs and professionals who are more

inclined to embrace the opportunities provided by global capitalism – and who

are also immersed in things like global pop culture and its mostly Western
artefacts. For Nasr (2009: 176–177), neoliberal globalisation is unambiguously

providing the cultural resources for Muslims to become more pluralist, as well as

capitalistic, without necessarily being less pious. 4

But Tripp’s observations, in particular, reinforce the point being made here

that the embrace of neoliberal globalisation, replete with its narrative of progress

through free trade, is more likely to occur when the social base of Islamic

politics includes those who are equipped to derive benefit from it. Such social

bases have been found within new Islamic populist alliances, most notably in

Turkey, but also in Egypt, albeit perhaps less visibly so. They have been far less

Perpustakaan SMA Negeri 2 Cibinong




distinct in Indonesia, where the big bourgeoisie remains dominated by ethnic

Chinese businesses for reasons that go all the way back to the structure of

colonial capitalism in what was once the Dutch East Indies.
In Egypt, therefore, even some adherents of the typically more conservative

and social exclusionary Salafi strand, including medium-scale businessmen

excited by the prospects offered by globalisation and, for a time, the possible

sidelining of Mubarak business cronies, suggest that they are not necessarily

against capitalism, as long as it is ‘ethical’. What is emphasised in this view is

that Islamic ethics functions to temper the depredations of capitalism instead of
5
serving as the basis of opposition to it. One major businessman close to the
Muslim Brotherhood leadership when it was in power, therefore, states that

adopting ‘the pillars of the free market economy’ would benefit businesses that

had been long ignored by the state due to the cronyism of the Mubarak era –

6
without forgetting to add the necessity of being mindful of ‘Islamic values’. The
practical implications of such a position are greater access to power and the

market for businesses that belong to, or identify with, the long marginalised

ummah and which therefore form part of the multi-class alliance that enables the

new Islamic populism.

Thus, like in Turkey under the AKP, and before it parts of Latin America,
we see that populist politics do not necessarily contradict the impetus to embark

on economic reforms in a neoliberal direction (Öniş 2012). Dagi points out, for

example, that privatisation has brought in revenue for the Turkish state to the

amount of $30.6 billion under the AKP government. Some of this privatisation

has involved large entities, such as the state telecommunications company,

Turktelekom, which was sold to a foreign company (Dagi 2013: 97), this time

based in Saudi Arabia. Significantly, sometimes protests by workers who have

lost their jobs as a result of privatisation have been brusquely dismissed as being

hatched by the mysterious military-dominated ‘deep state’. This was the

Perpustakaan SMA Negeri 2 Cibinong




situation in the case of the controversial sale of Tekel – a tobacco and alcoholic

beverages company – to the international giant, British and American Tobacco. 7

Such circumstances can be usefully understood in connection to Tripp’s
(2006: 103–124) observation of how many Muslim thinkers have attempted,

over time, to basically appropriate capitalism while adding a layer of morality

that could be regarded as being substantively Islamic on top of it. Thus, Tunisian

En Nahda Party leader and respected Islamic thinker Rached Ghannouchi argues

that free-market capitalism is wholly compatible with an economic system based

on Islamic precepts although, in his view, the latter would guarantee a high level

of social justice as found in the Scandinavian countries rather than the unbridled
8
capitalism of the United States. The irony, of course, is that En Nahda’s major
foe is that historical pillar of Western social democracy, the trade union

movement, which in Tunisia is stronger than its counterparts in other Arab

countries because of the considerable state patronage that went all the way back

to the days of Habib Bourguiba (see Alexander 2010; Bellin 2002; Anderson

9
1986). According to Ghannouchi, nevertheless, the injunction to pay zakat
10
symbolises no less than Islam’s commitment to social justice. Significantly,
such a commitment will have broad appeal especially in societies like Tunisia

where economic inequalities have been perceived as growing, notwithstanding
En Nahda’s running conflict with the unions. This is especially so because the

latter had been so tainted by past close association with the authoritarian state.

It is true, however, that many prior Islamic thinkers have accommodated a

range of anti-capitalist ideas in their critique of the marginalising effects of

Western colonialism; some of these were even incorporated by regimes such as

Nasser’s in Egypt and practised in the form of redistributive policies (Tripp

2006: 95). Even today the Hizbut Tahrir strongly latches on to an anti-imperialist

position to reject foreign investment in Muslim countries akin to that espoused

Perpustakaan SMA Negeri 2 Cibinong




by leftist movements, while its Indonesian branch is habitually at the forefront of

denunciations of the privatisation of state utilities (Munabari 2010: 198–199).

Nevertheless, because much of the critique of the old Islamic petty
bourgeoisie of capitalism was moralistic in nature – and infused as well by fear

of the revolutionary agenda of the radical Left – there is considerable room for

acceptance of capitalism, replete with its basic class structure, by their political

descendants. Gilsenan, for example, reminds us that the Muslim Brotherhood in

Egypt was ‘resolutely antileft and certainly saw no salvation in a revolution of

Egypt’s social structure’ (2008: 221), as was also pointed out in Chapter 3. This

is the case even if a range of ethical caveats were to be regularly pronounced by
Muslim social and political activists, such as avoidance of industries that revolve

around alcohol consumption or gambling. Class inequalities, by the same token,

can also be accepted as long as the payment of zakat is ensured to enable

activities that alleviate the suffering of the poor. 11

In the case of Turkey, it has been shown already that the AKP’s pro-

neoliberal reform position provides it with an instrument to cultivate support

from the more global market-oriented Anatolian bourgeoisie that had been

previously shunned in favour of the so-called Istanbul bourgeoisie – big business

groups nurtured under previously dominant protectionist and largely import
substitution industries-oriented policies (see Bugra 1998). This is indicated in

the running conflict between the AKP and TUSIAD, the business association

which claims that its members account for half of Turkey’s gross domestic

product (GDP) and that is widely regarded to represent Istanbul’s more

12
established industrial elite. TUSIAD businesses are also regarded as rivals of
business groups closer to the AKP, which assemble mostly under the auspices of

a different business federation, the aforementioned MUSIAD.

The latter organisation is considered by Başkan (2010: 410–415) to enjoy

such strong organic links to the AKP that its members provide not only financial

Perpustakaan SMA Negeri 2 Cibinong




resources but also actual personnel to work for local party branches across the

nation. Interestingly, an attempt to emulate MUSIAD took place in Egypt during

the short period in which the Muslim Brotherhood was in power. An Egyptian
Business Development Association (EBDA) was brought into being by

businesspeople connected to the then ascendant organisation with the aim of

developing a business community untainted by the sort of cronyism associated

with the Mubarak era. 13

That such an organic relationship came to develop in Turkey appears to

have been the outcome of developments that began with the economic reforms

of the Özal government and which culminated in those undertaken subsequently
by the AKP. These policy reforms facilitated the Anatolian bourgeoisie’s

consolidation as major exporters to European, Middle Eastern and Central Asian

markets and its development into a powerful faction of the capitalist class. For

the AKP itself, the embrace of pro-EU policies, in particular, conferred a degree

of international protection from its domestic foes given their indirect association

with politically liberal values. For example, more – and not less – civilian

control over the military apparatus would be required for Turkey to fall in line

with European standard practices (Rabasa and Larrabee 2008: 80). This is so in

spite of the EU’s continual refusal to accept Turkey as a full member country.
MUSIAD officials are thus aware that the attempted push into the EU has

gone together with the ‘democratisation and economic reform’ agenda that has

served them so well. They also note with enthusiasm that the top 200 companies

in Turkey in the 1990s did not include any ‘conservative’ ones – shorthand for

culturally Islamic and regionally Anatolian – but that ‘the monopoly has now
14
been broken’. Interestingly, however, Başkan (2010: 408) observed that

MUSIAD did not have the same zeal for the AKP’s immediate predecessor, the

Welfare Party led by Erbakan, which was thought to be too old-fashioned and

lagging ‘behind global trends’. The concern was apparently that Erbakan had a

Perpustakaan SMA Negeri 2 Cibinong




preference for economic protectionist policies that reflected more traditionally

petty bourgeois sensibilities that used to dominate the older form of Islamic

populism rather than those that represented the growing wealth and self-
confidence, in particular, of the Anatolian bourgeoisie.

In Indonesia, however, it has been said that the relationship between the

new Islamic populism and support for neoliberal globalisation remains much

more ambiguous. Certainly, the sort of self-assured embrace of neoliberalism by

culturally Islamic businesspeople, such as in Turkey, and even Egypt, is harder

to come across. Rather than overt acceptance, what is more likely to be

encountered are bywords like ‘good governance’, ‘economic efficiency’ and
‘civil society participation’, which are then linked to the ideas of ‘social justice’

and ‘moral society’ associated traditionally with Islamic politics since at least

15
the early twentieth century. This is in spite of the PKS chief Anis Matta’s
unusually uninhibited expression of support for full engagement in the world

capitalist economy, which he says would be achieved by enhancing the

entrepreneurial talents of the ummah. 16

But such confidence is not always reflected among the actual businessmen

that support his and other Islamic parties, for they remain too small and ill

equipped to thrive in a free-market economy in which they would have to face
well-established business conglomerates. Solo-based Muslim businessman and

rice distributor Joko Setiono, for example, is well aware that he and his

colleagues are not in any position to rival the more experienced Chinese

17
conglomerates in such a free market. Thus, he expresses the hope that support
for Islamic political parties would translate into direct benefits to his businesses.

He also makes few claims about readiness to plunge into a market free of

political connections even if those he already enjoys have not propelled him into

the big leagues of the business world. Similarly, another Solo-based

businessman, a member of the PKS, recognises that supporting the party has

Perpustakaan SMA Negeri 2 Cibinong




brought him such benefits as access to a wider circle of business contacts. He is

fully aware, however, that the party he supports lacks the clout, capacity and

‘machinery’ to help businesses owned by Muslims to compete with far more
established ones, including those owned by ethnic Chinese Indonesians. 18

In addition, because of the relative absence of a big bourgeoisie within the

ummah and the lack of a cohesive political vehicle to represent it in democratic

competition, there is much emphasis in Indonesia on the desirability of state

control over key (mainly natural resource-based) industries, to be utilised for the

common good rather than for private interests. Thus, support for extensive

privatisation of state-owned companies that have been powerful since the New
Order era rarely emanates from Indonesia’s manifestation of the new Islamic

populism. The focus on the aforementioned industries – usually validated by

reference to appropriate verses in the Koran or to selected Hadith – is not

surprising given Indonesia’s rich endowment in natural resources. Moreover,

Indonesia was one of the OPEC member countries that benefited from windfall

revenue brought about by the oil booms of the 1970s and early 1980s, though it

has been subsequently reduced to the status of net oil exporter due to dwindling

production and reserves as well as increased domestic consumption. The idea

that Indonesia’s oil wealth had been squandered during the Soeharto era, through
graft and economic mismanagement, is commonly encountered and provides

impetus for the assertion that Islam necessitates state control over public

resources, although with the familiar qualification that it should be exercised on

the basis of Islamic morality.

It is not always smooth sailing towards global capitalism, however, outside

of the Indonesian case. For example, the venerable Al-Azhar had pointedly

rejected the Morsi government’s issuance of ‘Islamic bonds’ for contravening

religious injunctions against usury. Under strong pressure to achieve concrete

results in reviving the economy, that government had produced a draft law

Perpustakaan SMA Negeri 2 Cibinong




allowing it to sell sovereign bonds representing shares in government assets and

utilities through public offerings. Interestingly, Al-Azhar also rebuked the

government for attempting to take up the authority to dispense with state
property without the approval of parliament. In this, Al-Azhar appeared to be

underlining its support for the democratic process – and distancing itself from

past association with authoritarian governments, as well as their neoliberal

economic policies. 19

However, displaying the contextual nature of doctrinal interpretation, Al-

Azhar has been, in fact, inconsistent in its views on the compatibility of modern

financial instruments and Islam. In 1989, when Mubarak’s position was virtually
unassailable, the Grand Mufti had actually issued a fatwa approving the issuance

of interest-bearing bonds by the government, while citing development needs

(Tripp 2006: 129). Given Al Azhar’s subsequent support for the military coup

that deposed Morsi, it may be that the age-old and internationally respected Al-

Azhar was simply signalling its unwillingness to subordinate itself to the Muslim

Brotherhood rather than substantive opposition to its economic policies.

In any case, it would be unwise to consider enchantment with global

capitalism as translating into the elimination of the state’s role in the economy.

What it does entail, of course, is a recalibration of that role – after all, even
neoliberal thinking at its source has dispensed with the idea that simply

dismantling the state or ensuring its economic retreat would produce efficiently

working markets (World Bank 1991, 2002). In other words, it is well accepted

within the neoliberal orthodoxy now that institutions need to be established to

facilitate the operations of these markets. As would be expected, this is always

an eminently political process in which control over the levers of state power is a

vital factor.

This is why it is important to recall that the appropriation of the neoliberal

agenda by powerful, even predatory, groups within countries moving towards

Perpustakaan SMA Negeri 2 Cibinong




greater engagement with economic globalisation is nothing new. Much has been

written about this in the Indonesian context, for example, where neoliberal

reforms since the 1980s have repeatedly provided new instruments to sustain the
ascendancy of entrenched predatory forces, whether in relation to the banking

and financial sector or decentralisation policy, as embarked upon after the fall of

Soeharto (Robison and Hadiz 2004; Hadiz 2010). The issue has been also

discussed in great depth in very different contexts, such as that of post-Soviet

Russia (Rutland 2013). Significantly, there is much space in any shift to pro-

economic globalisation policies for conflict over the form they would take and

whom they would benefit most. The problem for new Islamic populist forces is
how well positioned they are to gain the advantage from such conflicts in

specific circumstances.

Perpustakaan SMA Negeri 2 Cibinong








Neoliberalising Islam and the military



In this regard, it is noteworthy that the military as an institution has been among

the most serious sources of threat to the social alliances underpinning the new

Islamic populism, although such an observation particularly holds true for

Turkey and Egypt rather than for Indonesia. Importantly, the militaries in all

these countries have had a major role in suppressing various manifestations of

Islamic populism in the past. Such is the case in spite of the Turkish ‘synthesis’

of the 1980s, concerted attempts by the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt to

infiltrate the military going back to the 1940s, as well as the temporary alliance
forged between ICMI and military elements in Indonesia in the late Soeharto era

(Mietzner 2009). In all of these experiences, the relationship between the social

agents of the new Islamic populism and the military as an institution – and as a

particularly powerful receptacle of old regime interests – has been critical.

In all of these cases, it is also significant that the military had carved out a

privileged place for itself within the existing social order, to the extent of

occupying important positions within national economies and developing

significant stakes in them. In the Indonesian context, however, it is notable that

ethnic Chinese business conglomerates and other Soeharto-era cronies had long
dwarfed the military’s interests well before the advent of democratisation in

1998. This may actually explain why the military has been relatively restrained

in confronting coalitions of power that come together today through political

parties and parliaments, and which now dominate Indonesia’s highly corruption-

ridden democracy. Rather than curtailing the scope of these democratic

institutions, retired military officers have instead opted to join in and become

key figures in many of them, thus developing a way to indirectly protect the

Perpustakaan SMA Negeri 2 Cibinong




interests of the military and its personnel within the hurly-burly of Indonesian

democratic life (Mietzner 2013: 103).

In contrast to Turkey and Egypt, it is also notable there has been no
meaningful threat of a military clampdown on Indonesian Islamic political

20
vehicles since the advent of democratisation. Neither are there the kind of
potential associated conflicts having to do with economic reorganisation

between these political vehicles and the military given that neither can be

counted among the major economic players of the post-authoritarian period. In

fact, it is noteworthy that the economic base of Indonesian Islamic parties does

not lie in existing or would-be business empires but in their entanglement in the
murky world of Indonesia’s distinctly money politics-driven democracy, where

political and business deals are made behind closed doors. This has meant that

they have developed a strong interest to ensure the survival of Indonesian

democracy regardless of attacks against them launched by compatriots who are

not on the democratic route, often conveyed with reference to strict devotion to

religious doctrine.

In all of these cases as well, it is useful to recall that the role of the military

in the economy was initially the by-product of statist-nationalist modernisation

projects undertaken in prior phases of economic development. This sort of
military economic involvement was often proxy for the state role and thereby

given legitimacy in nationalist terms. In Indonesia, for example, the

nationalisation of foreign companies in the late 1950s – which came to be

managed by the military – provided a strong historical basis for the involvement

of men in uniform in economic activities for decades to come. Like the militaries

of Egypt and Turkey, the Indonesian military also developed a highly anti-

organised labour outlook because working-class movements came to undermine

its own interests as managers and employers (Hadiz 1997). 21

Perpustakaan SMA Negeri 2 Cibinong




Mohammad Ayoob’s (2007: 107) discussion of military politics in

Indonesia and Turkey is pertinent in this respect. He suggests that the armed

forces of both countries have been viewed as guardians of state secularism.
Though there has been no overt principle of ‘secularism’ as something ‘sacred’

in Indonesia, its military has perpetually projected the image of an institution

sworn to uphold the state ideology of Pancasila, an eclectic product of the

Indonesian anti-colonial struggle that Darul Islamists and like-minded groupings

have rejected because it has no basis in the Islamic religion. In both countries, as

well as in Egypt, where the integration of Islam within the nationalist state’s

ideological constructions has proceeded further for reasons discussed in Chapter
22
3, the military is also prone to present itself as the real embodiment of the
interests of the nation as a whole.

Well-worn historical narratives lend credibility to these claims. In

Indonesia, the military has traditionally enjoyed privileges because of its role in

the very creation of the Indonesian nation-state in a bloody struggle against the

Dutch after World War II. The Turkish military is revered for ‘saving’ the

country from Western occupation and perhaps colonisation following the demise

of the Ottoman Empire in the aftermath of World War I. In the case of Egypt, the

social prestige of the military has been undoubtedly enhanced by heroic
depictions of its role in wars against Israel, particularly that of 1973.

Nevertheless, the claim to represent the ‘nation’ masks the fact that all these

militaries have developed a range of interests of their own that are underpinned

by a huge presence in the national economy. To what extent Egyptian GDP is

attributable to military-related economic activities is debatable, but the latter is
23
certainly sizeable by most accounts. It is well known that military-run

companies in that country are involved in producing a bewildering range of

consumer goods as well as in property and retail, which have little to do with

defence or security matters. These economic interests go a long way in securing